Sharpie Professional 250 - Ford Qualifying Quotes

GREG BIFFLE-60-Charter Communications Ford Taurus (Qualified 1st) - "I'll tell you what, Brad Parrott and all of the guys are doing a great job on this Charter car. I think some of the speed of Charter's Internet service is kind of wearing off on this thing; it's a pretty awesome car. Right now we can't do anything wrong and we're pretty happy about it. We don't know if that will be good enough for the pole, but it's going to get us a good top-10 starting spot." HOW CLOSE TO A PERFECT LAP WAS THAT? "It's so hard to make a perfect lap at Bristol. There was definitely some more speed there. I just couldn't get it done. I tried maybe a little bit harder on the second lap than I should have and I got loose getting in there. I probably could have done a 14.90, the car seems that good. If the sun stays out we have half of a chance of starting near the top." HOW IMPORTANT IS PIT SELECTION AT BRISTOL? "You want to be in the top five for picking a pit here. I think that's good enough for a top-five, but we'll have to wait and see." POLE-WINNING COMMENTS. "It feels really good. Brad and all of these guys have done a great job on the Charter car. He was just telling me that this was his first time he's been here with a Busch car. We're looking over pit selection to see where we're going to pit. Obviously, picking a pit spot here is real important, so we're discussing that. I'm excited to have that Charter car up front again. Coming off of a win last week, I couldn't be happier." WHERE DO YOU WANT TO PIT? "I want the best spot, and we're trying to discuss that, where it's going to be. We may end up picking the first spot on the backstretch. Sometimes it gets slow around that corner with a big group of cars, but we have some work to do on the front of the car. We got in a little accident in practice today. We feel bad, we got into the 75 and turned him around. It's unfortunate for those guys; I know everybody is working hard, but I feel bad about that. We're going to have a good car on Saturday." HOW MUCH WORK DO YOU NEED TO DO ON THE NOSE OF THE CAR? "It's not bad. The guys have got it pretty straight. We had to pull the radiator out and do some things. I was right behind the 75 and he checked out of the throttle coming off corner, and I didn't even have time to get to the brake pedal. I'm not sure if he knew I was there or what happened. They've got it pretty much fixed and now we're just going to do a few more things in case we get a lot of those brake checks on restarts or something." IS QUALIFYING UP FRONT HERE MORE IMPORTANT THAN AT OTHER TRACKS? "It really is. Here and Martinsville are two places where it's really, really tough to get track position. Track position is really important and it's really tough, so we're going to try to keep our track position because, obviously, we have the best starting spot. We're going to try to kept that track position all day and see what we can do. Start up front and stay up front all day long. It all depends on these pit stops. You have to pick your pit stop strategy perfect. Last year I was running the 7 car here for Nemechek and we stopped too early and got in the back and got in an accident, so that can happen if you pit too early here. Track position is real important."

STACY COMPTON-59-Kingsford/Food City Ford Taurus (Qualified 21st) - "Jeff (Chandler) and I are both sitting here a little disappointed right now because we both felt that we were going to run a little bit quicker than that, but I think every week we're getting better. Jeff and all of the guys are making good decisions and we're figuring things out slowly, but I'm a little bit disappointed about qualifying still. We can't figure out why we can't pick it up in qualifying, but we'll keep digging. Every week we're making improvements and seeing big changes, and by mid-season this team will be good to go." HOW IS THE TIRE AFFECTING THE CAR'S HANDLING? "The tire has a lot of grip right now. This morning when I went out, I liked the tire. It seemed to me that it has a lot of grip and it should make for a good race."

MIKE WALLACE-4-GEICO/Sportclips Ford Taurus (Qualified 22nd) - "Our finishes haven't been that good that last few weeks, but our performance has been better. We didn't run quite as quick as we did in practice, and I was a little free off the corner. All in all, I think we're getting a handle on some performance, we just need the finishes to go along with that now." WITH THE NEW TIRE COMPOUND, WHAT ARE YOU EXPECTING IN THE RACE TOMORROW? "I don't have any idea. I just come to every race just like we always do, try to qualify as far to the front as we can and race this race track. One thing at Bristol, you want to try to get as far forward as you can at the start of the race that way you don't have to race so hard. It's a fun place to race, I enjoy racing at it a lot, but I don't know anything about the tires."

JASON KELLER-22-Bear Creek Soups Ford Taurus (Qualified 14th) - "This is a spillover from the last couple of weeks; we just haven't' been qualifying good and I don't know why. The car is racing great, but it's really hard to get it qualified good. We missed it again today. Hopefully that won't put us in too big of a hole that we can't get out ourselves out of. It's just disappointing when you know you have a great race car. At a place like this you better start up front so that you can show it." HOW IMPORTANT IS PIT SELECTION HERE? "Any time you can get an opening, and there are only four of them on pit road here, so pit selection is big here. But, you don't want to have to pass a lot of cars here. It seems to snowball here. It's a combination of a lot of things and you definitely need to qualify good here. Unfortunately, that's not going to stack up near as good as we hoped."

ROBERT PRESSLEY-47-Clorox/Wisk Ford Taurus (Qualified 9th) - "It was pretty decent. We thought that's about where we'd run, in a 30. You can run a low 30 and be fast here and run a high 30 and be way, way in the pack. That's pretty good and we'll take that; that will be about 10th or 12th." ARE YOU SURPRISED BY THE AMOUNT OF GRIP THE TIRES HAVE AT THE START OF A RUN? "I can't believe how much they have. I'm just wondering where the race is going to go as fast as we are right now, and what's going to happen in 20 to 30 laps." ARE THREE SETS OF TIRES ENOUGH FOR A 250-LAP RACE HERE? "I think that's enough because this race track is always known for rubber build up, and we don't wear them out here, but I just wonder how long we can go this fast."

BOBBY HAMILTON, JR.-25-Team Marines Ford Taurus (Qualified 4th) - "Compared to where we're at, I'll take it any day. Of course we want the pole, and if we could have had those extra two hours that the two guys ahead of us had, just that little bit of info that they might have gained could be the difference between fourth and the pole right now. Me and David were about the same, I think I missed him by one one-thousandth or so, but the tires are great here. All of the changes, you can feel them in the car. Everything seems to be working out as far as the chassis and the tires working together. It's a great feeling in the car and you can really hustle it, get in the gas early and drive the heck out of it, and that's the kind of race car I like, so we ought to be good tomorrow." HOW LONG DO YOU EXPECT THE TIRES TO LAST WHERE YOU CAN KEEP THESE KINDS OF SPEEDS? "This type of speed, not very long, maybe three or four laps, but the tire hardly ever drops off and stays consistent. The thing I like about it, besides the grip, is that when you make a small change, like an eighth of a bar, you can feel it. Maybe a couple of rounds here or there and you can really feel it. It's a great combination for this place. It's working out for us with the type of race car we have as far as wanting to get in the gas early and drive on off the corner. So far it's been a pretty good day." YOU STRUGGLED LAST WEEK IN DARLINGTON, BUT YOU SEEM TO HAVE REBOUNDED. "We just missed it and hearing the way the our car reacted compared to some of the Cup guys or the Busch guys, we were in the same boat. We just missed something small, and the one thing we had a meeting about, you can't let that one race decide your whole season. It's done with and we came here with a new attitude as far as just forget the points, forget everything else, we're here to win races and poles and it shows."

GREG BIFFLE PRESS CONFERENCE

"I'll tell you what, the guys have done a great job on the Charter car. We're real excited to have Charter High Speed Internet and their cable TV division sponsoring pole day today. It's pretty neat for us to get our first pole of the season in a Busch car here. A win last week, we have great momentum. I'm just real excited to be back in Bristol. I love racing here. It was a great lap. The guys have done a fantastic job with the Charter car, and we look forward to having a good race. We think the car is going to be good on long runs and we're really looking forward to it."

YOU WERE FAST ALL DAY TODAY. WHAT DO YOU CREDIT THAT TO? "Just the guys preparing the race car back at the shop. We tested at Texas this week, and so it was a lot of pressure on them to get the car ready to go in time. A couple of guys came back early from the test after we tested one day. The car chief Al (Tully) and some of the guys came back to get the Charter car ready for Bristol, and they said they worked on it dang near all day getting it ready to come up here. I'm real proud of the Charter team. We've got a new group of guys that really never worked together before and they're doing a fantastic job. We couldn't do a better job, I don't think, for our sponsor Charter. They're brand new to the sport this year and have never been involved in the sport before, and four races into the season to get them in Victory Lane and now got them a pole, so that's got to be neat to bring new sponsors in our sport like that. We need good sponsors like Charter in our sport today."

WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO WIN THE RACE TOMORROW? "It's really going to take a lot of pit strategy. Track position is really, really key here. Keep track position all day. It's when you get back there running 10th to 20th that it makes it hard to pass and you get the fenders knocked in a little bit here and there and you could get involved in an accident. If I can stay in the top seven or eight and stay near the front most of the day, that's really going to be the key to winning here in the Sharpie 250."

TALK ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE CAR. "It's not the first time we've ran this car. I think this car a later car than what I ran in 2002; I think they built it after I was gone. They built it the following year; they built it last year."